As Sprint 5 comes to a close, I believe we are making great progress. Our team’s primary goal is to have a completely functional data capturing service for offline purposes. With the achievements made during this sprint, it seems very realistic that we will have a working module by the end of this semester.

Our main objectives for Sprint 5 were the following:

1. Decide what would be the most useful data to capture.
2. Capture raw data to be stored into PouchDB.
3. Construct ideas presenting captured data in a meaningful way.
4. Improve cross-team communication.

I anticipate my career to involve software development for the rest of my life. I need to start preparing for the intense journey to come. That being said, I want to discuss The Long Road apprenticeship pattern. It seems directly relative to the situation I find myself in, which is a soon-to-be entry level software developer.

The Long Road is a portrayed as a direction apprentices should take when new to software development. It is asserted that those looking to journey down this proverbial road should not be looking to become instantaneously rich and famous. Instead, it is suggested that we ought to steadily increase our knowledge and skills throughout the decades to come. We should not feel obligated to accept any promotion that could potentially constrict our quest for knowledge. Continue reading “The Long Road”

It seems that as each sprint goes by, we tend to achieve a substantial amount more than the preceding one. This sprint is no exception. I feel it has a lot to do with us becoming more familiar with the project, as well as the Angular framework.

Our main objectives for Sprint 4 were the following:

1. Finish refactoring online-tracker to include a service.
2. Successfully install PouchDB within the AMPATH app.
3. Research and attempt using the PouchDB API to:
(a) perform REST calls.
(b) deal with synchronization.
(c) encrypt the data within the database.

It seems fitting to discuss the Find Mentors apprenticeship pattern this week. I recently finished up a successful refactoring of the AMPATH online-tracker. My pull request was accepted by their development team, and is officially part of the ng2-amrs repository. I am adamant the end result was possible only after receiving the help from a mentor of sorts. I consider Felix from AMPATH a mentor in the sense that he helped clarify many questions I had concerning the online-tracker refactoring, the overall project, and Angular in general. One of the objectives when applying the Find Mentors pattern is to seek someone with knowledge in an area of interest that far exceeds your own. Since Felix’s knowledge of the AMPATH application is leaps and bounds ahead of mine, I think I’ve made a considerable effort to begin applying this pattern. Continue reading “Find Mentors”

Those describing the Breakable Toys apprenticeship pattern assert the importance of designating a safe-space for failure. But we must accept there is no room for failure on the job. In a professional working environment, many expect us to produce material that works every time. But as depicted in this pattern’s description, failure is necessary in order to grow.

Building breakable toy projects can be a great way to contain, evaluate, and improve upon one’s failure. The idea is to personally design something “on the side” that emulates one or more features you’re working on professionally. Continue reading “Breakable Toys”

We started off this sprint with two primary objectives in mind. Soon I will discuss a bit about our sub-tasks to complement these objectives; i.e. Collaboration, research, complete tutorials, research some more, rinse and repeat…

But first, I want to elaborate on our primary objectives:1. Refactor online-tracker component to include a service.
2. Begin the implementation of an offline capture data service.

Our first goal, refactoring the online tracker component, proved to be a lot more simplistic than the second. For the most part, it only took moving around code from one file to another. The end result is the online-tracker-component now calls functions from the new online-tracker-service to determine whether there is an internet connection. Though a simple refactoring modification, this change should be beneficial to all teams in the near future. We can now use our new online tracker service to call functions to check for connectivity status. Since all teams are working towards an offline module for AMRS, we feel this is essential for any of us to go forward. Continue reading “Sprint 3 Retrospective: Offline Services Development Stage”